


Dirtier

by orphan_account



Category: AFI
Genre: Angst, First Kiss, M/M, highschool
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-03-01 23:42:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2791976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Traumatic. It was traumatic. I was pretty old. I think I was fifteen. I was shook up. I was rattled. It actually set the stage for the rest of the relationship, and thereby, the rest of my life."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dirtier

**Author's Note:**

> This is for two friends who teamed up and asked me to elaborate on the Davey quote seen in the summary. You are both wonderful supporters of mine, so here is a gift! I don't think Davey's first kiss was Jade, but hey, it could have been.

You’re fifteen, smile too much, and are only the third best skater of your group of three closest friends. You’ve never kissed a girl and can hardly imagine a plausible scenario that might arise to remedy this. You’re not even sure it’s something to be remedied; it’s just a fact; it’s just the way things are. Ukiah is boring. Your mother is Catholic. Jade is two years older than you. You have never been kissed. 

You’re fifteen and it’s April. You’re hanging out at Jade’s house after school, sitting in his garage between the aluminum christmas tree in its tinsel -drape of cobwebs and the box full of old sega games and bike parts. You’re listening to records on the turntable you lugged out of the living room and kicking your boards around; the plan was to skate but it’s raining. You love the rain, you love the placid thrum of it on the garage door; you love the way cars sound as they sluice through it. It’s funny how something as simple and natural as rain can make a town like Ukiah seem exciting. 

Besides the rain, Jade Puget is the closest thing to exciting Ukiah has within its sprawl of grapes and loneliness. He lies on his back with his left foot in its Doc Marten oxford resting on his board, rolling it lazily back and forth, and you watch him. He’s two years your senior, and a year from now he will already know what college he’s attending come fall. He represents everything you long for with the sick, nameless ache in your chest. A longing to escape. A longing for a city, an ocean. A longing for the rain, which he loves too. 

You always want something dirtier and more beautiful than Ukiah. Jade, by being older and cooler than your other friends, by knowing how to play guitar and by piercing his own ear in the boys bathroom with a needle and peroxide while you watched his blood bead and pool with a stomach of rolling fascination, somehow exists as the human incarnation of that dirt, that beauty. He’s going to college in a year; he’s getting out. He’s proof that it’s possible. He will forge a path you can follow. 

Right now Jade Puget is reaching blindly to his left, under a rolled up carpet and into a rubbermaid storage container of junk from which he pulls a vintage Playboy. The Pugets are weird. Dirty dishes rest in a haphazard multitude on the kitchen counter, which is something that shocked you the first time you came over. Your mother would never leave dishes in the sink if you invited a friend to the house, and she’d never let the friend pass through the door without asking him about his family, offering him sparkling water or juice, finding out his favorite subject in school. 

In contrast, Jade’s parents are rarely home when you come over and it seems like they let Jade and his siblings do whatever they want. Jade shares Lucky Charms with you straight out of the box the first time you hang out, and raises his eyebrow when you ask if you’ll get in trouble for it. He makes you feel infant, immature, sheltered in comparison. He makes you feel like he’s promising you something better. 

Jade’s dad smokes. He’s a musician and there are instruments everywhere, banjos and guitars and a very expensive looking accordion with abalone inlaid into its keys which hangs above the gun rack in the hallway. Guns are the only things in the Puget home which outnumber instruments, which also shocked you the first time you came over, because you know Jade’s parents are more liberal than your own, and you thought liberals hated guns. 

“It’s a collection,” Jade told you once, like it explained everything. “They’re not loaded.” 

You remember staring at the dusty glass-fronted cabinet at the rows and rows of rifles, their intricately carved stocks and slick steel barrels. They were dirty, and beautiful. It made you queasy to look at them, but you couldn’t look away. You could feel Jade’s eyes on the back of your neck as you stared, and you sensed his unease, like he was worried you were judging him, but you didn’t know what to say to let him know you weren’t. 

He thumbs through the skin-mag and your own skin prickles. This is a familiar feeling, resting on the outskirts of something foreign and adult Jade had access to, an access you’ve been denied. “Is that porn?” You ask, leaning forward, scooting towards him to peer at the magazine. All the women have shoulder length brunette and blonde coifs, and frosted pink leotard things which make their tits look cone shaped. You can’t imagine something like this ever turning anyone on. 

Jade laughs. “No. Not porn. No sex. Pretty interesting though, what dudes in he 70s used to jack it to.” 

The door slams open and Jade’s mom bustles in. You jump away from Jade like you’ve been burned, panicky about the Playboy, certain it’s something you’re not supposed to be looking at. Jade doesn’t act shifty of scared, doesn’t roll up or hide or toss the magazine like you would if your mom were the one standing in the doorframe with her gaunt face and floor length black skirt. He asks her what she wants, lets his skateboard roll across the floor to her feet. She kicks it back and tells him in a tired, exasperated voice that Aliysha’s flight is landing soon and she got called in to work. She asks him if he’ll pick his sister up, and he asks if he can bring you. 

Mrs. Puget says she doesn’t care, he can so whatever he wants as long as he picks his sister up. She puts on her sunglasses and walks over to Jade, kisses him on the forehead, then climbs into her Jetta. The garage door whines open, and you expect to get wet, but realize that it’s stopped raining. 

 

\---

You love storms so much the smell of wet pavement warming in the sun makes you sad because it means the rain is over. The drive to the Ukiah Municipal Airport smells overwhelmingly like that rain-ending sadness. You and Jade play the INXS’s _Never Tear Us Apart_ cassette on the way over and your palms itch with the desire to touch something, but you don’t know what. This is just something you feel sometimes, especially when you hang out with Jade. He drums his fingers on the steering wheel and asks you when you’re gonna learn to drive. You don’t have an answer. 

Being at the airport with him makes you wonder what it will feel like when he goes off to college. If you’ll feel abandoned, resentful. If Jade will miss you, or if the tumult you feel inside your gut when you watch him skate or play guitar or lie on the cement floor of his garage with a Playboy open on his stomach is a one sided thing. 

Aliysha’s flight is late, which makes you and Jade early. “Let’s explore,” Jade suggests, even though the Ukiah Airport it smaller than the Ukiah High Library and probably less interesting. You lurk awkwardly around the baggage claim, where the carpet is blue, stained, and hideous, and there are clusters of uncomfortable looking plastic grey chairs in rows to sit on while you’re waiting. No one’s waiting except you and Jade. “Race you,” Jade says, then starts sprinting from one end of baggage claim to the other. You tear after his heels but he’s faster. His sweatshirt is tied around his waist and trailing behind him, you reach for the sleeve of it to try and pull him to you, but he’s always a few inches ahead. 

You both slam into the opposite wall, panting and heaving and laughing. The solitary security guard outside the sliding doors of the Ukiah Municipal Airport eyes you warily, but doesn’t approach. You and Jade eye him back, doubled with laughter, short of breath. The smell of the world after the rain is all over Jade’s clothes, your face is close enough to his body that you know this. “Let’s get out of here before that guy arrests us,” Jade says through bouts of breathless laughter. His elbow digs into your ribs and you brace against the pressure, alive and frantic and new in ways you don’t understand. You’re smiling huge, wild. You smile too much. 

“He’s not gonna _arrest_ us,” You pant, but you’re hanging into Jade’s bare shoulder as he drags you off, stumbling. 

“He could. Cops love to arrest punks,” he tells you. “Dude, I need some water. Let’s find a drinking fountain.” 

The one drinking fountain you find in the entire Ukiah Municipal Airport is broken. Jade stands there smashing the button on it for a solid thirty seconds, and nothing comes out. You watch, feeling mysteriously elated. You’re hanging out with Jade Puget. Jade Puget is hanging out with you. He could be spending time with anyone in the world right now and he’s spending time with you. You’re picking up his sister from the airport so she can spend Easter with the Puget family. Ukiah is small but the world seems infinate, and Jade is the pearl glistening amid the insides of that oyster. You’re the sand sidled up against him. It’s dirty, it’s beautiful. 

“I’m gonna die of thirst,” Jade says, kicking the wall the drinking fountain is attached to. You shoulder open the bathroom door which reads “Family.” It’s a clean, tiled single-stall with handicapped bars. 

“We can drink from the sink?” You offer, and then Jade’s at your back, pushing you inside. 

“Sweet. You could hot box this thing so good,” he observes, admiring the bathroom. Then he glances over his shoulder at you, eyes huge and dark over an apologetic smile. “Not that you care.” 

You shrug. Jade gets high, but he doesn’t do it around you so you try not to care though hearing about it always makes you take a step back and consider how there are things you don’t and can’t offer to Jade. The things he does without you, the things you don’t understand. The vast, secret life you imagine he lives, which forces you to realize there’s only a small fraction of his existence you occupy. He’s not your best friend, he’s not even in your group of three best friends. He’s an older kid who invites you over sometimes, who makes you feel special and mature and daring and dangerous. Who makes you feel dirty and beautiful, who is all of those things or none of those things; you don’t know because you don’t possess all of him. 

Your breath caught and your heart sinking, you stop and watch him lean against the counter and into the sink. He turns on the faucet and lets water collect and pool in his palms, which he brings to his face to drink from. When he shuts the water off, his chin drips and again, your hands want to touch something, they want to thumb away the rivulets trailing down his jaw and into the cotton neck of his tank top. You feel alight with an insane, frantic longing in your chest, and you don’t know what it is you’re longing for. 

“Jade, do you think of me as your friend?” You ask before you stop yourself.

He makes a weird face at you, like he’s trying to decipher a language he’s not fluent in. “What do you mean?” 

Feeling stupid, your cheeks color. It has to be visible under the fluorescents, so you half turn away from him and answer, “I dunno. You just have a lot of friends. And I’m a freshman. And I don’t get high.” 

He laughs, reaches for you with an open palm like he’s going to touch your hair, your shoulder. But his hand drops before it makes contact. “I wouldn’t hang out with you if I didn’t like you.”

A slow-burning relief floods your body and you collapse into the wall, tilt your skull back against tile. The air sighs out of Jade as he joints you, and you stand side by side. Everything feels strange and confusing. You keep thinking you can still hear the drum of the rain, and then remember it’s not raining anymore. 

After a moment Jade clears his throat and says, “Actually, I’d way rather spend time with you than a lot of my other friends.” He doesn’t look at you. You are reminded of confession. “They’re fine, they just always want to get stoned. And I don’t _always_ want to get stoned. Plus they’re not...I dunno, good to talk to. I feel like I can talk to you better than a lot of the guys in my class.” He smiles slow, lazy, and turns to you. There’s color on his cheeks, too, and you wonder if it’s possible that he’s still flushed from your race. 

You smile back, stomach alive and sick with movement. You know this is called getting butterflies, being nervous, but it feels bigger than that. You don’t know what it is or what to call it, so you smile too much, thinking of all the dirt and all the beauty an entire city has between its bridges and multiply that in infinite ways. You don’t know how or why Jade Puget feels bigger than a city when he is just a kid you go to school with, a kid you’re leaning against the wall of an airport bathroom with some evening after school, but he does. He feels like the city’s reflection in the bay, one hundred thousand lights all flickering on the ragged black eye of the sea. 

“I can talk to you better than a lot of the guys in my class, too,” you agree, lamely. You watch a droplet of water on the corner of his mouth get licked away, and have to close your eyes. You swallow. “It’s gonna suck when you graduate.”

“You’re gonna miss me?” Jade asks in a low voice, pushing himself off the wall and in front of you. Your eyes are shut but you can feel his body hovering uncertainly before you, occupying space so close that you could reach for him and connect to skin. Of course, you don’t reach. You remain rigid and paralyzed, glued to the wall.

You feel him watching you, you can sense his gaze is confused, worried, threaded through with something even more shameful. Remorse, maybe. Fear. It reminds you of how it felt when he watched you inspecting his family’s collection of unloaded rifles. You are so enamored with everything Jade is and represents to you that you have, perhaps unfairly, cast him in role of immutable power. But there, in the hallway beneath the abalone accordion, and here, between a clean urinal and cleaner sink, Jade is exuding something sharp and electric and frightened. You can sense his vulnerability. 

A heat snaps to life in your solar plexus, and involuntarily you open your eyes, your gaze meeting Jade’s in a moment of what feels like mutual, unexpected, unguarded terror. 

“Well, yeah,” you answer, throat thick and voice nearly cracking. _You don’t even understand,_ you want to explain to him. _There’re more to it than you know. There’s more than even I know._ And there is more. More dirt, more beauty, but also something else. The way you feel about Jade is beyond recognition, it’s a force so primal and internal that you’ve never put words to it. “Of course.” You say. 

It’s in this moment that Jade’s eyes darken, and then you notice there’s a tremor in his hands. “Dave,” he says, sounding younger than you have ever heard him sound, younger than the guitarist of the only other punk band formed at Ukiah High, younger than seventeen, younger than someone you would idolize. Your heart is beating so loudly you feel like the bathroom must be resonating with it, the tile must be shuddering in time with your fear. “I’m scared,” Jade says plainly. 

And you don’t know why you do it. If you’re trying to tell him it’s okay but your lips get too close, or if you’re trying to suck his fear out of his mouth and into your own, or if it’s something more base and instinctual than that. One of you takes a step forward, and your shoes bump together, then your mouths are aligned and you can tastes all of his dirt, all of his beauty, and you want it for your own. There’s a breath between you, and then there’s not anymore. There’s no breath at all. 

You kiss Jade Puget, and for a few long, slick, searing seconds, he kisses you back. You feel him grab your waist fast and rough as your own fingers link behind his neck, you feel his mouth open and his tongue sweep your lips and you feel like he’s promising you something. It feels like two vast storms converging inevitably. It feels like the ensuing thunder. It feels _huge_. You don’t even realize that what you’re doing is kissing because it seems so huge it feels like dying. It feels like being born. 

You shake. Shake like the earth formerly lain over a fault line, shake like the Shake Shack at the Sonoma County Fair. You have never shaken so hard in your life, your teeth chatter like winter as Jade’s mouth drags hot and hungry over your own. 

Then. “Whoa,” Jade’s voice says, low, damp, close to your mouth. Then. There are fists at your chest, you’re getting shoved off hard and fast and slammed into the tile wall so rough your back sears with white-out pain. Jade’s standing a few feet away now, bent at the waist and sucking air like he’s desperate for it. He looks like he’s hyperventilating, a pantomime version being post-race out of breath. His eyes, dark and wide, stare hard at the floor, and you, stunned and sore and still shaking like you’ve never shaken before, try and piece together what has just been shattered. 

“What...why did you do that?” He asks, sharp and accusatory. 

You shake. You don’t know what you did, let alone why you did it. Your mouth is stinging like it has been torn asunder and you’re still shaking. You eye Jade carefully, like he might shove you again, and take a tentative step forward. “I’m sorry,” you say. 

He holds his hand out, backs away. His eyes flash wild and feral and it occurs to you for the first time that he’s _angry_ at you. You did something and it made Jade angry. “What are you doing?” the words slam out of him fast. You’re trying to move closer to him because you’re trying to make things better, fix them, but then he’s slamming you to the wall again, he’s pinning your wrist above your head, holding it there so tight you can feel the bones and tendons inside you grinding together. You imagine them becoming broken and fractal; your whole forearm sings with the pain of bruising. You wince, and Jade’s heartbeat thunders so close to yours. 

“Stop,” he says, even though he is the one using force, he’s the one pinning you to the tile and breaking your wrist. 

“I’m not doing anything,” your voice comes out strained and your eyes are watering. He’s still tightening his grip, still braced against the wall before you with his face millimeters away from your kissed lips, breathing hard and fast with his jaws set like rigor and his eyes all pupil. You’re half hard in your skate shorts, a terrifying heat on your thigh. You don’t know what’s happening. You’re not sure if Jade is going to kiss you, or snap your forearm. You shake in his grip, silent.

“Okay,” he says, more to himself than you. “Okay.” He lets go and steps away, and you feel the blood inch back into your hand. You’re still shaking. 

Jade pushes off of you and starts pacing in the bathroom with his face in his hands, his long pale fingers pushing through his hair over and over again. 

“I’m sorry,” you repeat, and again try and catch him like he were a leaf in a storm, something palm-sized and savable. You think of his sweatshirt sleeve trailing behind him while you raced, and that seems like an eternity ago. 

He backs away from you. “Don’t. Just. Stay over there for awhile.” 

You sink to the floor, sitting on your hands with your back to the tile to prevent yourself from recaching for him. Your whole body feels raw with hurt and confusion, your eyes stinging and a thickness in your throat. Jade eventually stops moving and sits on the toilet, head hung and arms over his head. He takes a few deep breaths and you watch him keep touching his mouth like some of you is left on him. You shake. You shake like Hollywood over the San Andreas, you shake like the Big Dipper on the Santa Cruz Boardwalk. The sound of your teeth chattering is all that echoes in the room. 

After awhile, Jade looks up and blinks. You see that his eyes are red, swollen, and his cheeks are wet. An icy pang of fear and shock spikes through your insides. You have never seen Jade cry before. It hurts to look at, but you can’t look away, so you just lock eyes across the room, studying each other from your opposite walls. Eventually he says, “If you ever kiss me again, I’ll kill you.” 

At first you feel relieved because he doesn’t sound angry anymore. The fight seems to have drained out of him, leaving his voice hoarse and defeated. Then, the heavy dread of what he’s saying sinks into your bones. _If you ever kiss me again_. Kissing. You _kissed_ Jade, that’s what this was. The enormity of this realization hits you like the whole of the ocean, pulls you under and takes you over and changes you forever. This, here, this mess in this bathroom in the Ukiah Municipal Airport, is your first kiss. Your first kiss is with Jade Puget, your dirt and your beauty, who will kill you if you ever try it again. 

You inhale, deep and ragged, and then answer, “okay.” 

“Okay,” Jade echoes. Then he sniffs, wipes his nose on the shoulder of his tank top before he rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands. He looks very shaken up, but you are the one still shaking. After awhile he asks, “Are you gay?” 

It seems so absurd, so irrelevant. You try and think hard about it, but your mind is flooded with all the images of every girl you ever had a grade school crush on, all the pictures of Madonna and Winona you’ve stared at with faith or longing. “No,” you answer, with certainty. 

He stares at you. “Then...why did you do that.” 

“Jade,” you say desperately, and he flinches at his own name. “I don’t know. I didn’t even know what I was doing. It was an accident.” 

“Okay,” he repeats. “Okay.” 

Minutes of silence pass and you think you can hear what might be the storm resuming its rainfall outside. You wonder if Jade’s sister has landed yet, if you’re late. If you will look suspicious when you emerge from this bathroom, if everyone will see you and know you have changed. It feels like kissing Jade has stained you forever, and your body will never be your own again. 

Eventually you start inching closer again, because even the threat of death is not enough to keep you away from Jade. He eyes you warily, but stays silent, and you scoot on the ass of your shorts until you’re sitting beside him. It feels like a long time before you can see the tension fade from his body. 

“Lemme see your wrist,” he says after awhile, and it takes you a few seconds to force your hand up towards him you’re shaking so badly. He examines the tender bruising at the bone, his fingerprints and fury imprinted into you. At first his palms are clasped together in his lap, but he releases them so he can touch you, carefully, like he’s proving to himself he can. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, and you notice his hands are shaking too. 

“It’s fine,” you tell him. You’re thrilled he’s letting you sit beside him. You’re thrilled he’s not trying to beat you up anymore. You’re thrilled he’s touching your swollen skin with the guitar-rough pads of his fingers without throwing up. It’s fine. It really is fine. _You can never do that again_ , you tell yourself as if it’s a new doctrine, as if it’s a truth you must follow like an apostle. _You have his friendship. Let that be enough._

Jade rubs his mouth one final time, rough with a fist like he’s fighting off a feeling, and then gets up. “Let’s go,” he tells you. You rise on shaking legs, and follow.

Outside, the rain comes down steady and slicks the sliding doors. You watch it and think of the tears on Jade’s cheeks. The carpet seems even more blue and more stained and more hideous, and the chairs are newly full with people waiting for their loved ones to file off the plane, join them for Easter. 

Your heart is still fast and sick in its forever longing to catch up to Jade Puget. He walks ahead of you with a nervous slump to his shoulders, a self-conscious fear coloring his steps like you were eying his rifles and not the rain. He looks more human than you have ever seen him before, dirtier and more beautiful. There’s a vacancy in your chest, and it grows.


End file.
